Falling Skies (New TNT Sci-Fi Series)

It entertains me. I can't ask for anymore.

 

Watched the season's first. Confusing.

 

I'd say the special effects are on par with other similarly budgeted cable shows that require CGI of this sort. When they get super CGI heavy in some scenes, the limitations stand out more.

The fake bloody head shots on The Walking Dead are far worse and distracting.

The wardrobe isn't as gritty as it should be, and Pope always appears rather meticulously groomed for a bearded, long-haired ex-con renegade.

 

They've definitely changed it up more than premieres for previous seasons. The references are kind of obvious with the "reeducation" camp and whatnot, and there was still some clunky exposition-fueled dialog (e.g. "you've been weird with me ever since the Karen thing".... Ya think?)

 

Gave up on it. Too contrived, too cheap, too dumb. The show went way past my threshold for stupidity.

 

An example from the latest episode...awful writing >>>

Spoiler

Pope decides to only use the right shoulder strap of the backpack with the bomb although he attempts to climb a dangerous pole. And not only that...nobody tells him to wear it properly. He climbs the pole and of course he drops the backpack.

 

Agree. It hasn't been a good first few at all. Not sure I'll stay all season.

 

The writing on most shows like this has some WTF moments. I still enjoy this show more than a lot of stuff I’ve tried that’s still on. It hasn’t gotten any worse lately, so I’m still on board. I did catch the backpack issue as well as mentioned above, that was the first thing I thought!

My biggest annoyance (besides the whole Lexi subplot, which I think/hope is supposed to be troubling and annoying) is the Ann character making all those people schlepp through everything they are specifically and solely in order to find her daughter. She makes this explicity clear several times in their cutaway scenes, that she doesn’t care about anybody or anything else other than her daughter. I don’t think that’s the kind of “leader” that anybody would want. She clearly would sacrifice anybody on her team to save/find her daughter. She’s also not a particularly credible “badass” that the writers are clearly trying to make her.

 

Couldn't agree more. The whole Lexi and Ann turn around is not working.

 

Her killing of the captured skitter was one of the more repulsive scenes I run across on TV lately. I know that she's supposed to be just a distraught mother desperate to find her lost child, but that scene made her out to be nothing more than raving psychotic who enjoys killing solely for the sake of killing (actually made me feel sorry for the alien).

 

It was a guilty pleasure for the 1st 3 seasons, with an interesting premise that was weighed down with bad acting and sloppy writing. After the 2nd episode this season my wife and I decided it was over. Tom as a motorcycle riding vigilante was bad enough, but it was Ann's forgetting to follow the children in pursuit of her own child that did us in. I'll wait until it's over and then call up the wiki page to see how it's resolved.

Mark

 

I have occasionally glimpsed 1 minute of the new season just while waiting for a new episode of a different show to start, and so far, I'm glad I avoided this series. It sounds to me like it's just as stupid as ever. Good aliens (who are secretly bad), bad aliens (who are even worse), rogue aliens (who are being remote-controlled by the bad aliens), humans with bugs in their backs... it's a mess. Plus it looks like crap. Apparently there is no color in Vancouver, according to the pictures from the show.

 

You got all that out of a minute?

 

It has become even dumber this season if you can believe it. I think they are pushing out enough episodes until they can hit syndication, there is no other reason for this show to remain on the air.

 

The show apparently has a decent following. There were even some tie-in comic books, comic-con merchandise, etc.

There's way more inane stuff on the air. I don't think it's any worse than most series of a similar genre and budget.

Watching one minute of the show, especially the new season, isn't going to endear it to anyone already predisposed to dislike it, that's for sure.

 

Perhaps 100 isn't needed for syndication these days, but the show only does 10 (or 12 this season) episodes per year. It would have to do two more seasons (including the new one) just to get past 50.

 

No, it's worse. It's laughably bad now.

 

And it wouldn't have been difficult to write a better scene. If the writers wanted him to drop his backpack in order to create more drama,
they could have made the Black Hornet cut through one of his shoulder straps. It would have been a simple solution.

 

Bad, bad, bad. I can't see this junk coming back. Man, it went south. A unwatchable b movie.

 

It's already been renewed -- they aired a promo of the "final season" for next June right after the finale ended.

 

This show is now total soapy tripe! I'm sure Spielberg wanted to do a WWII soap-opera, but substituted Nazis with Aliens lead by Col. Klink!

 

V (ABC series) was so much better than Falling Skies. It's not fair that it got cancelled after season 2.
They had around 5 million viewers each episode during season 2. Now check out the ratings of Falling Skies >>>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falling_Skies_episodes#Season_4_.282014.29

 

Not for me. I think I gave it a handful of episodes before dropping it, and that's despite Morena Baccarin being in it! It was similarly stupid - annoying teenage melodrama, aliens doing dumb things, no science behind the fiction, etc, etc.

 

I enjoy both iterations of “V.” Earlier this year I finally got into the remake version on blu-ray. I enjoyed it enough that I wish they could have continued. But I wouldn’t say “V” was of higher quality than “Falling Skies.” I’d argue it had even worse special effects, especially the odd choice of pulling a George Lucas and shooting segments on the ship in full green screen where everything but the people and perhaps a table were CGI. That looks bad enough when you have Lucas-sized budget. “V” did not. I did notice the CGI got slightly better in the second season, but it was still really distracting. “Falling Skies” has bad CGI too, but at least they shoot most of the stuff on real, physical sets. “The Walking Dead” also has horrendous CGI, but they still also shoot on real sets, so it’s not as grating.

“V” I would argue was actually more campy than “Falling Skies”, and that kid that played Elizabeth Mitchell’s son (both the actor and the written character) was way more annoying than any character on “Falling Skies.” The two shows actually have a lot of similarities in my mind. Interesting premises, with a few good cast members, but with shaky writing and production values.

 

I believe they announced the renewal back in July. So that at least allowed them to not, if they had been inclined, re-write or re-shoot or re-edit this season's final episode to make it a series finale. For better or worse.